Good morning. Today we are going to continue to look at the series called the story. Today, we are going to dive into a mini-story that is part of the grander story. We are going to look at the story of Deborah that is found in the book of Judges. Some of you are familiar with the book of Judges. You may recall that the key theme is man’s sinfulness contrasted with God’s grace and mercy. Specifically, in the book of Judges we see how the Israelite people seem to have a problem. They would be delivered from one thing; they would be freed up from the hand of an aggressor or enemy, only to find themselves falling back into old habits and old ways. God was trying to use these people to rise up to be the chosen people, to be the blessed people that would be a blessing to others, so he could not tolerate this sort of thing. What would often happen is we would see the people engage in some sort of evil behavior. What God would do is allow the people to go back into some form of slavery for a period of time and then after that we would find that the people got tired of being in slavery and they would cry out to the Lord and the Lord would send a deliverer to them to free them from the hand of the oppressor. The deliverer’s name went by the title of Judge. Keep in mind when we talk about judge, we are not talking about a judge that we think of today. They have some similarities because the judge back then would be involved in legal disputes and that sort of thing. More often than not, the judges would be considered military leaders before they had kings. These judges would get involved in administrative things, legal things, but more often than not they were military leaders in charge of protecting the Jewish people and basically waging war if they had to.
You may be familiar with some of the judges in the book of judges, people like Gideon and Samson. I think I preached on them a few months back. Some of you may not be familiar with the judge that goes by the name of Deborah. Deborah was really a woman ahead of her time because over 3,000 years ago women were not thought of in high regard. They were on equal status with animals. They really were not given high status. Consequently, they did not have much of a voice at all in their community. For some reason, during this time, God chose to raise up a woman by the name of Deborah to be the leader of the Israelite people and lead them through this particular time of chaos. Really it was kind of a time of chaos. I said the theme of Judges was people doing evil in the eyes of the Lord. In the story of Deborah that is no exception. The first line in Judges 4:1 says “After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin, a king of Canaan who reigned in Hazor.” We see this pattern beginning to start again. The people were doing evil in the eyes of the Lord. We don’t know exactly what the evil was, but a lot of times it just has to do with just falling back into idol worship or marrying into pagan families and that sort of thing. We don’t know what it was, but we know that the Lord did not approve of it, so he sold them into the hands of Jabin. This is more of a metaphor because we don’t think he literally sold them into slavery, but it means that he allowed them to be enslaved by this wicked king named Jabin. Jabin indeed was a wicked king. He was very wicked. To make matters worse, he had a very large army. We are told that he had an army that consisted of 900 iron chariots and the thousands of men that would go with that. He had this large army. This large army was under the command of a guy named Sisera. He was the commander of the army. If we had time to look at it, we would see that Sisera ruled cruelly over the Israelite people for 20 years.
As the cycle continues, we see that the people got tired of being oppressed by Jabin and his commander Sisera. So they let out this collective cry and God again, in his grace and mercy, sends a deliverer, and the deliverer’s name is Deborah. We really don’t have a lot of information about Deborah other than the information we get in a few of the opening verses. In Judges 4:4-5 it says “Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at the time. She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim and the Israelites came to her to have their disputes decided.” Out of that initial passage, we can glean some information about Deborah. First of all, we can glean that she was a prophetess, which is basically a woman prophet. Sometimes when we think of a prophet, we think of somebody who is able to somehow look into the future and make some sort of a prediction. In some cases the people were able to do that, but more often than not, when they were talking about a prophet, they were talking about somebody who had this direct pipeline to God. God would give a word and they would be able to speak a bit of truth into the existing situation. That was really the role of a prophet or prophetess.
As an aside, some of you know that here at Bellevue Christian Church, we believe that God has given everybody a spiritual gift or two. One of the spiritual gifts is the gift of prophecy. There are people that maybe have that gift and don’t realize it. There are people that have the gift and choose not to exercise it. In some churches there are people that have the gift that actually abuse it. But whatever the case, the gift of prophecy is a very real and I would say needed thing in the church today if it is used properly.
Anyway, Deborah was a prophetess and we also know she was married. What we see in this passage something that some people struggle with is that she was a leader. She was leading Israel at that time. This is a big thing. Israel was in the midst of this total chaos and all this evil. For whatever reason, God chose to rise up a woman to oversee all the Israelites. Apparently, she was a very, very wise woman because people would go to her and go under the palm on the hillside that was named after her, the Palm of Deborah, and they would go there and she would settle disputes. Apparently, one day, because she had this connection to God, she received a word from God. God told her to go to Barak and tell him something. The passage goes on to say “I want you to say to him ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor.’ I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon river and give him into your hands.” I will lure Sisera. You see immediately that God is behind the scenes orchestrating this event. We know a little bit about Deborah, but we really don’t know about this guy named Barak. We know that he is from the tribe of Naphtali, one of the Jewish tribes. What we can gleam from the following verses is that he had what I would call a Moses complex. He was kind of a reluctant leader. Remember the story of Moses we talked about a few months ago. God appeared to Moses in a burning bush. He told Moses here is what I want you to do. I want you to go see Pharaoh and I want you to tell him to let the people go. Of course, Moses was reluctant. He made all sorts of excuses. We begin to see that with Barak. The minute that Deborah told him to go, he turned around and says “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.” I don’t know about the men in the church, but when I first read this it made it sound like Barak is a little bit of a wimp. He is being called to go into battle with ten thousand men and he asks a woman to go with him. When you are reading scripture, it is okay to ask question and begin to think what is going on here. We really don’t know. We do know that Deborah decided to go with him. Her response was interesting. She said “I will go with you but because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will hand Sisera over to a woman.” Who is that woman? Who do you think when you read that? The reader would think that it is Deborah but it actually turns out to be this tough woman named Jael. Jael is someone I am going to introduce in a few minutes. She took Sisera out in a very gory way. In fact, there are some kids here; you love the blood, guts, and gore, pay attention because you are going to see it.
Again, so she says alright I will go with you but because of the weird way you went about it, you are not going to have the benefits. You are not going to be able to take Sisera out. I am going to give that to another woman. As the story goes, Barak leaves and grabs his ten thousand men from two tribes and he takes Deborah. They head up a hill called Mount Tabor. Mount Tabor was a very strategic point in the valley. Here is a modern day picture of Mount Tabor. You see the benefit. If you get to that high hill, you can see all around the valley. This is part of God’s strategy. He says go up to Mount Tabor and take ten thousand men. While they are up there, apparently Sisera gets word that they are up there so just as the Lord had said he would do Sisera and his 900 chariots and all the men begin to make their way up towards Mount Tabor by way of the Kishon river. That normally would be a very strategic thing to do because the Kishon river was next to this wide plain and it would be good for taking all these people and chariots through there. What they didn’t take into account was the fact that it was in the middle of the rainy season. In the middle of the rainy season what happens is the Kishon river tends to overflow. Apparently, by the time they got back down into the valley, they began to hit the mud and muck and before they knew it, they had really entered into a death trap. Things had gotten really bad for Sisera and his army. At that point, not Barak, but Deborah who was so connected with God, she knew this was the time to act. This was a time of decision. So she says to Barak again “Go! This is the day the Lord has given Sisera into his hands. Has not the Lord gone ahead of you?” Again, she is in-tune to the spirit of God. Barak, at some point here, musters up some strength. We have no idea where the strength comes from, but the passage goes on to say that he advanced upon the entire army. He slaughtered all the men. The only one that escaped was the commander, Sisera. We go on to read “Sisera, however, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there friendly relations between Jabin king of Hazor and the family of Heber the Kenite.”
This is where I have to stop and explain something. We don’t know a lot about Jael but we can figure out a couple things that are very interesting facts. For one, she came from the tribe of the Kenites, which were really a nomad, gypsy-type tribe that traveled around and apparently were good at metal working. They just traveled around the countryside. Apparently, they had good relations with wicked king Jabin. We don’t know why. Maybe they sharpened his swords or whatever. We don’t know what the extent of it was. Maybe they were just merchants for them. It is clear that she and her family had a good relationship with Jabin. There is a lesser known fact that if we had time we would go back and look at where it talks about the idea that the Kenites had a distant connection to one of Moses’ relatives like his brother-in-law or father-in-law who was actually a Kenite. Here we have Jael who has a connection with wicked king Jabin, but she also kind of has a loose affiliation with the Jewish people. She is not Jewish but she has a relationship with them. We get the sense that, by the time we get to this point, there are some mixed loyalties going on. This person, Jael, is maybe torn. She doesn’t know what to do. What she really doesn’t know is Sisera is about to show up at her tent. As the reader reads this, they begin to think what is going to happen when he gets to her tent. What is she going to do? She does something very odd. Not totally odd because this is expected during that time. People are expected to show hospitality and that is what she does. She actually goes out to meet Sisera and says “‘Come, my lord, come right in. Don’t be afraid.’ So he entered her tent, and she put a covering on him.” The passage goes on to say that he got thirsty. He was tired and thirsty and asked for some water. For whatever reason, she gave him milk instead. Then he got kind of demanding on her. He says if anybody shows up at the tent and they ask if there is anybody in here besides you, you better say no. This is where it gets a little bit gory. It gets really gory. What happens is “Jael, Heber’s wife, picks up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to him (meaning Sisera) while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drives the peg through the temple into the ground and he died.” I have never heard of that happening. You watch the news and you see some bizarre stuff. I have seen some tough Pittsburgh women but I have never seen anybody that can hold a candle to Jael. She is a tough one.
As the story goes, she has killed Sisera and where is Barak? He is still in pursuit. Barak shows up and she says the guy you are looking for is in the tent. She opens the tent up and there is Sisera laying there with a peg through his head. It is a gory scene. How would you feel if you were Barak? If you are honest with yourself, you did all that battle. You wiped out everybody. The guy you were after was taken out by a woman. Wouldn’t that bother you just a bit? The women are saying we got him. It would bother me. Again, that is the way God orchestrated it. Probably about that moment when Barak goes in there and beginning to think bummer, then he remembers what Deborah said. Because of your strange request, you are not going to have the honor of taking Sisera out. It was just the fulfillment of that prophecy. That is pretty much the end of the story of Deborah except the last line in that chapter ends by saying “On that day, God subdued Jabin the Canaanite king before the Israelites. And the hand of the Israelites grew stronger and stronger against Jabin the Canaanite king until they destroyed him.” The end of that period of slavery. In chapter 5, there is a song of celebration. At the end of chapter 5 it basically says they got 20 or 40 years of peace. That is pretty much the end of the story of Deborah.
If you are like me, when you first hear that story, guys are saying that is a cool story with all the blood and guts. It is really a strange story and a story that I really struggled with whether I even ought to mess with it because it leaves so many unanswered questions. Questions like why Deborah? Of all the men in Israel, why choose a woman? That is what you guys are thinking. Some of you are thinking that. The other one is thinking about Barak. Is Barak some sort of a mama’s boy or some sort of a coward? What do you do with Jael? Is she a murderer or a hero? Out of curiosity last week, I sent out a text to some of the guys to see what they would say about the story. I got back from somebody that said I don’t have much insight other than women with tools are dangerous. It’s true. Women with tools in the wrong hands can be dangerous. Aside from that, the question that I think some of you women might ask is why did Barak end up in the Hall of Faith? Chapter 11 of Hebrews he is listed. Chapter 11:32 says “And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised.” If you are women and you just got done reading Deborah and you read this and you see about Deborah and you see about Jael, and he makes it into the list of Hall of Faith. What do you think? Does it bother any of you women? It should. Why did it happen? I don’t know. In fact, these are all good questions that I don’t have answers to. I read commentaries and the commentaries don’t have answers to them.
Instead, I will just make some suggestions. Going back to the idea of why did he choose Deborah? Out of all these guys in all of Israel, why pick a woman to lead Israel during this most difficult time? The answer I have is that the men didn’t step up to the plate. There were men around but maybe they were too engaged in the evil activities. We don’t know what they were doing but for some reason they didn’t step up and do the things they were supposed to do. This time I will give a plug for the men’s retreat next month because the theme of the men’s retreat is stepping up. Men, for too long, have been sitting on the back burners of the church and family and it is time maybe they step up and assume the roles that God has given them. Not in an attempt to keep women down but in an attempt to do what they are called to do in whatever area that they are called to do it. I would encourage you, if you are a man here and you don’t have anything scheduled for next month, you should be at that retreat. If you are a woman married to one of those men, and you don’t have anything on the schedule, you need to nudge him to get there. Our goal is to have 60 men there and I think we are going to get it. Maybe Deborah was called into leadership because the men didn’t step up. It could be another thing. You women will appreciate this. Maybe she was more qualified. Maybe she had the better résumé. Maybe she was the one that, during this critical time in history, she had the résumé. She had the gifts. Getting back to the idea of spiritual gifts, we give people a spiritual gift test. In addition to people having the gift of prophet or prophetess, some people have the gift of leadership and even women have the gift of leadership. I know some churches don’t like that. I came from a church where they wouldn’t let women be ushers let alone a leader. That is the truth. That is not a joke. I struggle with that. I think some of you do. I know some of you women struggle with that. Why would God give somebody a gift of leadership and then when they are about to take that gift, he snatches it out of their hand and says nope. You are a woman. You are not qualified. I suspect there are some men that struggle with that. They don’t like the idea of women stepping into leadership. If you don’t like that idea, then maybe you need to step into leadership because the bottom line is in most churches in America, the women are leading the church. They are. It can’t be denied. That is just a suggestion about why God chose Deborah at that time.
What about Barak? Was Barak some sort of a coward? I really don’t think so. Yes I think he had to pay a bit of a penalty because he showed some lack of trust by saying unless you go with me, I am not going to go. He had a price to pay and the price was that he would not have the honor of taking Sisera out. That is what happens. Sometimes when God tells you to do something and you say I really don’t want to do it. So God takes somebody else and sometimes you lose the opportunity to share in the honor of that thing. I don’t think he was necessarily a coward. I think it wasn’t so much that he didn’t trust God. It was that he didn’t trust himself. He was a man that was living in a very evil time, which means he was part of that population. We have no idea of what his relationship was with God at that time. We have no idea. But he did. Maybe he is thinking I don’t have that direct connection with God, so I am going to seek out somebody that does have that connection with God. In other words, I know that Deborah has the intimate, ongoing relationship with God, so if I am going to go into battle against this wicked king and his commander, I am going to make sure that I have somebody that is discerning to be with me. To be honest, that is what we need to think about as a church. Too many times in a church what happens is we put people in leadership just because they are able to do things. Whether it is administrative or craftsmanship or speaking or running the nursery. Whatever it is. You know what; God doesn’t care what you can do. He really doesn’t. I don’t really care what you do. I care about who you are at your inner being and what kind of relationship you have with Jesus Christ. If you don’t have an active, living, walking, thriving relationship with God, not perfection, but you are not a God chaser, someone whose heart is after God, I don’t want you in leadership anywhere. Because if you step into leadership, you are not only going to mess yourself up, you are going to mess the whole population up. I think Barak was smart because he sought out a spiritual woman in this case. But it doesn’t have to be a spiritual woman. It can be a spiritual man. I will be honest with you, if I wasn’t married to a spiritual woman named Debbie when I came here, I probably still wouldn’t be here. I am serious. If I did not have her next to me, I don’t know if I would have survived these last ten years. We don’t need leaders. We need spiritual leaders. That is my thought about Barak.
What about Jael? Jael is this really odd sort of woman. We really don’t know what to do with her. I struggle with it. Is she a murderer? Is she a hero? Some of you watch Downton Abbey and in the last episode the remaining question out there was is Bates a murderer or a hero? If you watch that show, you know what I am talking about. It is the same situation here. Is Jael a murderer, a villain, or is she a hero of some sort. We really again don’t know for certain. But what we do know is that she was a woman of divided loyalties. When push came to shove and the whole event came down to her and her response in that tent, she could have chosen to go on the side of Jabin or on the side of God, and she chose to go on the side of God. Because of that, she may not be listed in the Hall of Faith, but she has a nice little write-up in chapter 5 of Judges. A write-up that begins like this: Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, most blessed of tent-dwelling women.” I don’t know about you, but I don’t hear many women in the Bible being called blessed besides Mary. She is called blessed. Regardless of how she carried out that act, she is called blessed. I think she is called blessed because she chose to be on the side of the Jewish God and not on the side of king Jabin.
My last question is in all this weird story, where was Jesus? If you have been here long enough, my goal is every sermon somehow should try to tie in Jesus and not in some sort of a contrived way. But if we believe that Jesus is the center of everything for us, we always have to ask that question: where is Jesus? Personally, I didn’t want to preach on this passage because Jesus is nowhere to be seen in this passage. The more I reflected on it, I thought sure he is right in the middle of the whole thing. Right smack dab in the middle. If you have been around this series since the beginning, you may recall we are calling it The Story. It is the story of the Bible, but it is actually a story about God bringing his people back home. It is a story of God redeeming his people and the redemption comes through Jesus Christ. So this story of Deborah just like many of the other stories in the Old Testament are merely just glimpses of the ultimate redemption that comes through Jesus Christ. Even though this story took place a long time ago, I think most of you can acknowledge the fact that we live in evil times. We live in a time where people are doing evil in the site of the Lord. We live in a time of chaos. You can’t help but watch TV and see the weather or whatever it is and there is something going on here. I don’t want to say what it is, but it seems like God might be up to something behind the scenes. What is going on here? In the midst of all this evil, people are still being caught into slavery. Not physical slavery but slavery related to addictions. Things like alcohol and drugs and pornography. But really enslavement of the mind. People who are so caught up in fear they can’t even get out of bed. People that are caught up in depression. People that are caught up in anxiety. They are enslaved. You have all these people out there crying out to the Lord. The Lord says I have sent you a deliverer. The person’s name is not Deborah, not Barak, not Jael. His name is Jesus Christ. Different from the deliverers back then that only lasted for about 20 or 40 years, the deliverance that comes through Jesus Christ lasts for all eternity. God is saying I am still delivering people. The story of Deborah is just a snapshot of the greater redemption that comes through Jesus Christ. God is out there saying I am out there. I am doing it. I am orchestrating you. Even though he sent Jesus Christ who is now in the form of the Holy Spirit to us, he still uses people to accomplish his deliverance. He needs us. He needs the Deborahs out there. He needs the prophets and the prophetess out there. He needs people that have the gift, not the arrogance, but the gift of prophecy that are willing to examine a situation whether in the church or in the world and say this is what I see here. Because of their credibility in the past, you begin to listen to them because you know that they are in-tune to the spite of God and they have the authority not by title but by influence and by knowing that they have spent time with Jesus. They smell like Jesus because they are so close to him. Those people are what the church needs. God is saying I have accomplished my deliverance but I need some Deborahs. I need some prophets. I need some prophetesses to rise up. But I also need some Baraks. I need those reluctant leaders. I need those people that just maybe have a little struggle with their own security but they know that they are being called to lead something. They are smart enough to figure out that they can’t do it on their own. If they don’t have that connection to God, they better seek out a man or woman that has that connection. Otherwise, they are setting themselves up for failure. God is saying I need people like that. I need people to rise up and be the Baraks. Even the Jaels. The gruesome act she did, but it wasn’t about the gruesome act. It was the fact that God had placed this woman at one place at a particular point in time in a particular season, a woman who was torn between the world and God, and when the timing was right, God gave that person an opportunity to choose which side she was on. You may be one of those people. You may be one of those people that God is setting you up to make a decision because you are riding on the fence. You don’t know whether you are in the world or with God. You have one foot in the church and one foot in the world. God may give you the opportunity to choose and hopefully you choose rightly. If you choose rightly, if you choose to be on the side of God instead of the side of Jabin or Sisera, he is going to allow you to participate in the glory and allow you to participate in the honor that he gets.
In closing, this is serious stuff. We are talking about the kingdom of God that is in the process of unfolding. Not just today. It has been unfolding since the time of Jesus. If you don’t believe me, go back and read the book of John where Jesus is being challenged because he is casting out demons and somebody accuses him of being a demon. Jesus says if I cast out demons by the power of God that means the kingdom of God is here right now. You better pay attention. Not only pay attention. You have a choice whether or not you want to be part of that kingdom every single day. God is looking for volunteers; the Deborahs, the Baraks, the Jaels. Looking for people that will partner with him in carrying out his promise to deliver the people from their sin and give them the salvation they so much desire. I want to refer to one of my favorite verses in the Bible. It comes out of Psalm 40. King David shouts out: “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet upon a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.” That is the work that God is in the process of doing. Listening to the cry of the people and allowing everybody to participate and taking that person and setting that person up on a rock and that rock is Jesus Christ. Let us pray.
